


The Triumph of Hope And Experience

by Alterey (reyva_foreyva)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/F, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 00:29:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20380681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reyva_foreyva/pseuds/Alterey
Summary: As the Resistance rebuilds, Leia and Rey grow closer.





	The Triumph of Hope And Experience

**Author's Note:**

  * For [indigo_inks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigo_inks/gifts).

Leia looks out at the Resistance.

At this precise moment in time, the Resistance is a few dozen people, crammed into a single spaceship that's practically falling apart around them, on the run from a power that's achieved as great a hegemony over the galaxy in weeks as took the Empire years. A power now headed by her own son.

But all of that barely matters to Leia, because one of those few dozen people is Rey. Leia watches as she pores over the relics she's brought back from Ahch-To: the precise, careful way in which she handles them; the way she affords them respect but not reverence. Sees her weighing the broken lightsaber parts in her hands.

She hasn't felt a hope like this since meeting Luke, all those decades ago. The same combination of immense power and earnest ... _goodness_, there was no other word for it -- against all the odds. No wonder it was this woman who had been able to find him where everyone else had failed.

As she carries on watching Rey, she remembers what Rose and Finn told her about Canto Bight. The Resistance isn't just the people, although they're important. The Resistance is an idea. Even for Rey on remote Jakku, it was an idea that had kept alive a spark of hope in her mind, against the daily grind of her existence.

* * *

After three days in hyperspace, sleeping in shifts in uncomfortable conditions in a cargo bay, they're sufficiently far from First Order territory that they feel confident establishing at least a temporary base: a lush, temperate world in orbit of a binary star.

Poe's heard rumours of abandoned shipyards and other manufacturing facilities in the outer system, takes Black Squadron to investigate. They return jubilant, having found more than they could ever hope for: whenever the previous occupants cleared out in a hurry, they left behind copious raw materials.

They will have fighters again, and before long a fleet. Some ask where the people to crew the ships will come from, but Leia smiles and tells them not to worry. That the right people will find them, at the right time.

The evening is long, the secondary star casting its softer glow on the scenery. As it's finally setting, its orange-red hue reflected on the high clouds, Rey walks through the long shadows towards Leia's command centre, clutching one of the ancient texts.

"Can I help you?" Leia asks.

Rey puts the book down on the desk in front of her. "Yes, I think you can."

"I'm not a Jedi," Leia says immediately.

"I don't need a Jedi," Rey retorts. "But I do need someone who understands the Force."

She can't argue with that. And so they begin to work, side by side. As they do, Rey tells Leia about Luke, learns about a different side of him to any that she ever saw herself.

"Did Luke really read all of these?" Leia asks at the end of the second hour of frustration.

"No," Rey says.

"Are you going to?"

"All of them? Probably not. But I have to start somewhere."

* * *

In the days, the base is a bustle of activity. Work continues to build an undetectable node on the deep space comms network, so that they can monitor what the First Order is up to without being observed themselves. The Falcon comes and goes several times a day to the manufacturing complexes, or to the inhabited system in the next sector where they've started to pick up new recruits: at first, just those desperate enough to take any route out of their current lives, but in the last few days, people have started turning up in the cantinas having heard that they meet the Resistance there. That's dangerous, and Leia has already consulted with Rey about more than one potential spy. Rey keeps busy herself, training, building obscure tools that she hopes will help her to construct a new lightsaber from the shattered remains of the old ones.

In evenings that shade later and later into nights, they work together on not only deciphering the texts, but reinterpreting them. The wisdom of the Jedi is deep, but so too is the wisdom of recognising that the Jedi failed. They embark on long abstract philosophical debates, about the nature of the Force, about the path to the Dark Side -- painful for Leia to think about, but something that she knows they must face. About whether the Jedi were right to ban attachments.

One evening, Leia discovers that from Rey's point of view, those debates weren't quite as abstract as Leia had thought. When Rey kisses her for the first time, it's like tasting hope.

* * *

Their relationship progresses slowly. She's sure that there's plenty of gossip, but nobody is foolish enough to repeat it in her presence. Poe makes cryptic allusions, but in an entirely supportive way: he knows too much of love and loss to find anything but joy in seeing two people find one another.

As she did back on the Falcon, Leia watches Rey. She has less and less time to do so now; managing the Resistance is, as it always has been, a full time job, but more so than ever now that the guttering flame she tended is roaring back into life.

It seems to Leia as though Rey's fortunes with mastering the Force mirror the fortunes of the Resistance, but whether there's anything to that or not is hard to tell. Whatever the truth of it, it's certainly the case that it's the same day that Poe reports they're up to four full fighter wings, all with fully trained pilots, that Rey finally manages to construct a working lightsaber all of her own.

Leia watches the delicacy of Rey's fingers as she combines lens, emitter and crystal, double checks them all in their housing, thumbs the switch--

\--and the lightsaber ignites, a brilliant silver -- unlike any she's seen before, or even heard of. Even in the bright double sunshine, the new source of light draws everyone's attention.

That night, they make love for the first time. It's as though her success has unlocked something inside Rey, removed some final barrier to her acting on what Leia knows from their many late night conversations are her most sincere beliefs about the positive values of intimacy.

As they undress each other, those same nimble fingers that Leia was admiring earlier run across her skin in ways that she'd almost forgotten were possible. Leia reciprocates with lips and tongue, until -- gloriously, inevitably -- her head is between Rey's thighs. Rey almost struggles against her, trying to manoeuvre Leia into a position where she can reciprocate, but the true selfishness here is Leia's, exulting in making her lover come for the very first time.

It takes Rey a few moments to recover, and then Leia finds herself beneath her, Rey's hand pressed urgently against her mound, a finger circling her clit before sliding inside. She can see the intensity of the look on Rey's face, an almost fierce joy that transmutes into a more animal pleasure as another finger joins the first. Leia nods minutely to the unspoken question and Rey begins to fuck her -- not _forcefully_, not exactly, but not gently either. Rey is strong, and Leia likes that. As Leia's orgasm approaches, she begins to groan, and Rey suddenly leans down to kiss her, pulling Leia's bottom lip between her teeth, absorbing all of Leia's incoherent noises into herself. Rey's tongue flicks out across Leia's top lip, and it's the thought of her tasting herself that finally drives Leia over the edge.

They've each climaxed twice more before they finally fall asleep, limbs tangled together, Rey's dormant lightsaber on the nightstand.

* * *

_What does Rey find in all this?_ she wonders often, but never dares to ask out loud.

Eventually, though, she figures it out. It takes her longer than it should have done. Understanding people, what drives them, understanding how to turn those motivations to mutual advantage, knowing when they must be opposed. That's how her connection to the Binding Force works. But it does mean that sometimes she has a blindspot in regard to herself.

Leia is hope to Rey, just as Rey is hope to Leia.

* * *

Leia looks out at the Resistance.

She is standing on the bridge of the new flagship, the assembled fleet visible on the viewscreen, the crew of each ship laid out in front of her, every space in the room not occupied by officers physically presence filled up with holograms.

The news from the Core is dire; those systems which did not surrender are in flames. Many of their new recruits are refugees from those worlds; Leia has had to bend their desire for revenge towards a desire to reclaim.

And reclaim they will; they are coming to liberate the galaxy. The co-ordinates are laid in: a massive strike against the very centre of the First Order's power. Timing is everything; their intelligence tells them that the entire upper hierarchy will be gathered together for a conference for only two standard days.

Leia started her career facing down a man she didn't know was her own father. As it draws to its end, she confronts the man she knows all too well is her own son. But the real commonality is that she knows that however long it takes, freedom will prevail.

Rey steps up to her and takes her hand. With the most powerful woman in the galaxy at her side, she is more confident than ever.

She speaks into the comm, clearly and confidently, so that everyone will hear it on ever ship. "May the Force be with us all." She smiles. "Now punch it."


End file.
